A Wall Street Journal Bulletin

Vol. 21, No. 5: Layoffs

With the recent round of corporate layoffs in the news, we remind everyone to include what percentage of the work force the cutbacks represent. This adds the needed context. Saying, for example, that “Boeing will lay off 750 employees in Southern California after losing a lucrative military-satellite contract” leaves the reader wondering how many will remain on the job. For large conglomerates, it is most useful to give the percentage of the work force of the unit involved.

The category plaintiffs’ lawyer(s) should include the apostrophe, although it frequently appears without. The reasoning is that plaintiffs is a genitive, (not an attributive noun), and genitives indicate a category or kind relationship, beyond just possession. Just as women’s magazine tells which kind of magazine, plaintiffs’ indicates which kind of lawyer. Such genitives are usually plural, incidentally: boys’ camp, children’s zoo. A given court case might involve the single plaintiff’s lawyer, but the category is plaintiffs’ lawyers.

The verb announced is being overused in the paper in corporate articles. “In almost every case said is better,” Matt Murray says (not announces).

Note that Ecuador has rejoined the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries after having dropped out in 1992. The 13 members, as listed in the updated stylebook entry, are Algeria, Angola, Ecuador, Indonesia, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Libya, Nigeria, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates and Venezuela. Indonesia recently indicated it plans to drop out by the end of the year because it has less and less oil to export.

Headline hazards

“Lawyer Garnishes Support Despite Recent Indictment,” said a headline, leading to a reader’s surmise that we meant that he had “garnered” support. The headline writer actually was going for a touch of irony, suggesting that the lawyer garnished, or enhanced, his unsavory criminal indictment with some words of praise of colleagues. Though the use of garnish in that respect was defensible, it probably wasn’t worth the confusion it caused.

Headline writing, like journalism in general, is subject to a lot of second guessing (helping to keep newsletters like this one in business). But because headlines get special scrutiny, we must use overdue diligence so that they don’t unintentionally mislead or err.

What, me worry?

In separate articles in successive issues, the name of the vacuous Mad magazine character Alfred E. Neuman was misspelled as Newman. He was once a presidential candidate, after all.

Mini quiz:

Danglers and so-called disjointed appositives keep appearing, so we will keep preaching.

After nearly 34 years as a journalist, the entrepreneur deep inside has finally won and I’m leaving to start a research firm.

As co-director of the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University, Ms. Goodwin’s interest in corporate power was mostly academic.

Described as having been recently performed on by a concert pianist, the visit revealed a tattered instrument/

Answers to mini quiz:

If the entrepreneur inside you has been a journalist for nearly 34 years, what have you been up to?

Yet another disjointed appositive. Ms. Goodwin and not her interest presumably was the co-director of the institute. (See July 2007 S&S item on disjointed appositives and countless quiz items since.)

Described as a dangling participle, it should be rewritten.

Quintessential quiz

Find the flubs in these Journal passages.

The reasons range from spiraling exploration costs to the increasingly remote climates where new oil pockets are being found.

Iraqi police said eight missiles or mortars had hit the Green Zone and another 14 fell in other parts of the Iraqi capital, killing two people and wounding 20.

I was stunned by the enormity and sophistication of the AQS show, with 400 quilts on display.

The European Union trade chief told Japanese officials and businessmen that Japan “remains the most closed investment market in the developed world.”

Hedge-fund managers who fail often convince investors to hand them piles of cash so they can give it another go.

Hedge-fund manager Spencer Lampert spent $7.6 million to buy the home but later razed it to the ground.

It was the fifth such incidence involving GE’s premier engine family in about three years.

The shortage may explain why disgraced hosts like Don Imus, fired by CBS Radio for racially insensitive comments, was snapped up by rival Citadel Broadcasting Corp.

But some executives say that an overreliance on syndication and the resulting lack of a farm team has created a staleness in radio programming.

Some homes that sold for more than $400,000 a couple years ago now go for $225,000 to $260,000.

Answers

Climes might be remote; climates aren’t.

A trifecta! Mortar shells hit the Green Zone. (Mortars, or cannons, fire the shells.) And if eight had hit, then 14 had fallen, to make the tenses agree. Third: Use another only if the subsequent number is the same as the first number.

A daily double! Stunned, suggesting “knocked unconscious,” is hyperbole in this case and most others. Enormity still primarily means wickedness and is misused to mean huge size, or immensity.

Business executives is the preferred locution if there might be women present – and it’s usually best to assume there are. (Note our headline on an item above refers to hatchet bearers. Editors were once jocularly known as hatchet men, but we recognize the trends.)

They persuade investors to give them cash.

Raze means “tear down completely,” so “to the ground” is redundant.

It was the fifth incident or occurrence or fifth instance. Incidence refers to the frequency of occurrence: The high incidence of engine problems plagues GE.

The hosts was snapped up, was they?

The two factors has caused staleness, has they?

Couple years, instead of the proper couple of years, appeared 11 times in three months. Couple remains a noun, not an adjective.